


Promises To Keep

by Selena



Category: 18th Century CE Frederician RPF, 18th Century CE RPF
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Brother Feels, Brother-Sister Relationships, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Loyalty, Seven Years' War, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22408975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selena/pseuds/Selena
Summary: It's 1758, the Seven-Years-War rages, and the royal family of Prussia is tearing itself apart. Wilhelmine, Friedrich's favourite sister, wants to reconcile the feuding brothers. But Wilhelmine is dying…
Relationships: August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia & Henry of Prussia, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Augustus William of Prussia, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Henry of Prussia, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Other(s), Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia, Henry of Prussia & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	Promises To Keep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mildred_of_midgard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildred_of_midgard/gifts), [raspberryhunter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/gifts).



> **Author's note:** Warnings for abusive (historical) backstory for all main characters.

His oldest sister is dying, there is no doubt about that. Heinrich knows it the moment he sees her: arms and legs swollen, when she used to be on the thin side, while her gaze is feverishly bright. They carry her in, as they used to carry their father, during much of Heinrich’s childhood.

„Dearest brother,“ she says, Wilhelmine, and at least her voice is unchanged, musical, with a slightly teasing undertone. „Henri. Don’t look as if you face a ghost, little brother. I am earthbound yet.“

But he is facing a ghost. Several of them. Heinrich knows death, intimately by now. He’s seen it on the battlefield, over and over again. He’s seen it afterwards, in the tents and barracks, among the wounded who could not be saved. He has felt it near him, with a bullet grazing his skin, tearing some flesh away in passing but causing nothing worse than some fever. He has even dealt it out, by his commands and by his hands.

What he hasn’t seen, though, what he has never seen, only imagined, over and over and over again for weeks now, was the death of their brother Wilhelm in June. Because Wilhelm died far from him, died a lonely death in his palace Oranienburg, disgraced and shamed, in torment. It is August now, in the year of no one’s lord 1758, and the world is on fire.

_She doesn’t know it yet_ , Wilhelmine’s husband the Margrave had said to him before allowing Heinrich to see her. _Please, dear brother-in-law, do not tell her. The doctors fear that any additional distress…_

Heinrich had wanted to laugh. He is getting cynical that way. Distress indeed. There is a war going on, with nearly every nation in Europe seemingly bent on Prussia’s destruction. All courtesy of the man who truly _is_ Wilhelmine’s dearest brother, their family’s head, the architect of all their fates, including Wilhelm’s. Friedrich, by the grace of no one but himself King in and of Prussia.

„As much as the goddess of music can be earthbound,“ Heinrich says, which is the kind of courtly gallantry they were all taught, kneels down next to the chaiselongue they have put her on and kisses her hand. The swelling makes her hand near twice its usual size. _Dropsy_ , he thinks, and again recalls, as he hasn’t done for quite a while, their father, terrifying everyone even from his deathbed, body swollen with that same illness, as it had been for much of Heinrich’s early life. „How fares your opera, sister?“

Music is a safe subject, he assumes. They all love it, all of their family that yet lives: to listen to, to play, even, in her case and that of the King, to compose. She has built an opera house here, in the tiny principality her husband rules, and her musicians can easily compete with those in Berlin. Could. If they still live. He does not know anymore, does he, who lives and who is dead.

They talk a while of opera, of composers, of pieces for the violin which is his instrument, and the lute which is hers. Not of the flute, he notes. The flute which is the King’s instrument, and just as much associated with him as this war. It seems that even sick, she is a tactful woman, his sister, seventeen years older than him and an almost-stranger until her own daughter got married and Heinrich had to represent the family at the wedding.

Then she says: „I am so proud of you, my dear. The Margrave tries not to trouble me with news of the war, but this much I have been glad to learn, that you have proven yourself as a commander all our enemies fear. Little Heinrich. Henri. The King has so much praise for you in his letters. He calls you his right hand.“

„Does he,“ Heinrich says tonelessly, and Wilhelmine’s eyes, feverish or not, get sharp.

„You know he does. He must have told you, too.“

„I am, of course, profoundly grateful for the King’s regard“, Heinrich says, and then he cannot stop himself. The poison which is eating him inside out spills over. „All the more so as it is usually fleeting when directed at a brother.“

Wilhelm’s death might be unknown to her, but Wilhelm’s disgrace is not. Everyone knows. Has done so since last summer, when the King their lord and master has chosen to casheer Wilhelm in front of all the army. Wilhelm, whom Heinrich has always loved best of all his siblings, whom he had grown up with as Wilhelmine had done with the King.

_Don’t you worry_ , Wilhelm had said, the last time they had seen each other, in winter, his eyes as feverish as their sister’s are right now, don’t you worry about me. You’ll make a mistake if you do. And he _does not forgive mistakes. You go out there and help save the state, little brother. Then the sun will shine on us again._

„Oh, Heinrich,“ she says, and she says it in German, which they never use towards each other, not since their father had died, who had insisted on that language. The King, by contrast, dislikes it. And the King has remade them all in his image. „Don’t do that. Don’t let that bitterness in. I grieve for the misunderstanding between our brothers, and I promise you, I will not cease to plead Wilhelm’s case to the King. But do not allow hate in your heart. He _is_ your brother and your King.“

_And you_ , he thinks, in German as well, because the words are hard and painful and should not be prettified by French melody, _and you, my dear sister, are a hypocrite. Our late father was your father too, and your King, and you have hated him for what he did. Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I remember?_

It is, if not his earliest memory, then one of the oldest, this. He is four years old. And they are all together, which is rare. All of his siblings, the princes and princesses of the royal house of Prussia, all except for one. His oldest brother Friedrich, who has done something, Heinrich knows not what, except the fear in the room is palpable, and their mother the Queen has told them that as soon as the King arrives, they must plead for their brother Fritz, they must. The King arrives; the old King, whom Heinrich has no earlier true memory of than this day. His father shouts about death, and then he starts to beat Wilhelmine. He doesn’t slap her, no. He uses his fist to punch her in the face, in the stomach. He grabs her head, and screams „traitor“ and „canaille“ and „you knew!“ There’s something, too, about Wilhelmine surely having disgraced herself with someone named Katte as well, but by then Heinrich cries as loud as the rest of his siblings while their mother screams. The King is law. There is no one above him. At that moment, it seems he could beat their oldest sister to death, and there’s no safety, nowhere.

He doesn’t remember how the scene ended. Evidently not with Wilhelmine’s death; someone must have calmed their father down. But he doesn’t know who, or how. He just remembers the blood pouring out of her nose and the screams.

Wilhelmine has grabbed both of his hands again. It seems grotesque to feel her fingers, formerly slender and deft, now heavily on his.

„Listen,“ she says, and now speaks French again, his language of the heart. „You do not know him like I do. He loves our brother. I swear he does, despite all that has happened. He carries a heavy burden, you must know that. It impacts on everything he does. But he loves Wilhelm. He loves you. Love will prevail, in the end.“

_Oh, I know him,_ Heinrich thinks. _Whoever it is that you think you know, sister, he is gone._

And yet, and yet, he carries in his vest a royal letter that pleads with him, asks for news about the dying woman in front of Heinrich, begs, even. Swears its writer cannot live without her. If Friedrich loves any one of them, it must be her. _Think that I was born and raised with my sister from Bayreuth, that these first attachments are indissoluble, that between us the keenest tenderness has never received the least alteration, that we have separate bodies, but that we have one soul._

_These first attachments are indissoluble._

They are indeed. Wilhelm is – was – four years older than Heinrich and has always been there. Cheerful, unafraid, because Wilhelm alone did not fear their father but got him to laugh and smile. Wilhelm the tall, where the rest of them are of middle stature, small, even, in Heinrich’s case. Wilhelm the generous. Have mine, Wilhelm says, when Heinrich is distressed about a broken toy, and: _come here_ , when it is cold at night, so very cold, because their father wants them to grow up hardened, like the Spartans. Their steward, thankfully, ignores it when Heinrich climbs into Wilhelm’s bed.

Wilhelm the dead. For now and evermore.

But she’s alive, still, Wilhelmine. There has never been more than a general family resemblance between them all, not particularly marked, but there, all the more so since their parents are first cousins. Yet now, with her sick like this, he cannot help but see it: the way she manages to look like both Wilhelm and Friedrich, who Heinrich had always thought to look nothing like each other.

There is so much hope in her expression now, and he feels split in two. One part of him, the one who sounds like Friedrich in his mind, wants to shout the truth at her. That Wilhelm is dead, has died in agony, unabsolved by that brother she still insists on loving, on the contrary, hounded till the end by scornful letters declaring him to be an incompetent fool. It is easy to imagine the words spilling out of him, all too easy.

They once played a strategic game, Heinrich and Wilhelm. To see what would happen if Prussia engaged in another war One of them played ambassadors, imagined supply lines, organized fortresses. The other, devising strategy, played the King.

There had never been any argument as to which of them that should be, despite Wilhelm being the older, and, in fact, the heir to the throne, for Friedrich has no son, and never will.

_We have nothing to reproach each other with_ , Friedrich had once written him, and: _We have the same coldness._

Wilhelmine‘s eyes burn into his, and there’s a terrible fragility about her, as there had been with Wilhelm the last time Heinrich has seen him alive.

„May it be so,“ he hears himself say instead, his voice thin but unwaveringly lying, and carefully, very carefully so he does not hurt her, he tries to return the pressure of her hands in reassurance. „May it be so, dear sister, for our brother’s sake.“

He does not say which brother.

„Thank you, Henri,“ Wilhelmine murmurs, but if he’d thought she’d be content with this, he has underestimated the tenaciousness she shares with all their siblings. „I remember your baptism, your know,“ she continues, „as if it was yesterday. Do you know who held you over the basin?“

„No, they never told me,“ he replies, and would be grateful for the change of subject, if he didn’t suspect she hasn’t changed the subject at all „Was it you?“

He knows his godfathers, but none had been present at his baptism. It had been the same with his younger brother, the last child born to their parents. Several noble godparents were chosen, from kingdoms and principalities far away. Then one of the child’s older family members took their place during the actual ceremony.

Wilhelmine shakes her head. „No,“ she says. „No, I carried Wilhelm, four yours earlier. It was my brother who carried you, Henri.“

_My brother_. Before the King became the King, she always referred to him this way, in her letters, during her rare visits, never mind that she has four brothers. Had. Only three now. There has never been any question as to whom she means by this designation.

_She is a sister who has my heart and all my confidence, and whose character could not be paid for by all the crowns of the universe. I have been brought up with her since my childhood; so you can count on the fact that between us two, these indissoluble bonds of tenderness and attachment reign for life, which all other bonds and the disproportion of age can never equal._

Those lines are written in that same hand which, just one and a half month earlier, has written to Heinrich: _Think, please, that in less than a year I have lost a mother whom I adored and a brother whom I have always dearly loved; in the critical situation in which I find myself, do not cause me new afflictions by the harm that grief could do you, and use your reason and philosophy as the only remedies to make the evils bearable to us._

„I did not know that,“ he says barrenly.

„He was tired that day,“ she says. „Our father the King had stepped up the drills for him, and reduced the meals, for things had started to turn badly between them, and he meant not just to educate but to punish him when putting him to military service. I do not think my brother slept more than a very few hours that entire week. And you were crying the entire time, all through the ceremony. Little Heinrich. I must tell you, secretly I was afraid my brother would drop you, and was prepared to catch you if that happened. Yet he never did. He held you firm. He would not let go.“

„He never lets anything go,“ Heinrich retorts. „I was hardly particular in that.“

It is out before he can hold it back, the kind of swift reply he’d given her if she was healthy, for verbal sparring was something she had always enjoyed. Besides, it is true. Friedrich is good at taking, and good at holding, the territories he invaded being but one case in point. He might push you with one hand, but not before making sure the other still holds you, just in case he still has need of you. He is not good at letting go.

„You are alike in that,“ his oldest sister observes, and while he is about to protest, she continues: „But I will have to learn how to do it, now that I am dying.“

  
Heinrich freezes. Calmy, she returns his gaze.

„You think I do not know? My dear, I may not be a soldier, but I do know death. I have lived with mine for quite a while now. But now this most unwelcome guest has finally decided to take over this rather ruined mansion,“ Wilhelmine said, gesturing towards her body.

„You may yet recover,“ Heinrich protests, and she shakes her head.

„Not from this. For myself, I have made my peace with it. For my daughter – it will be hard for her, but she has her father, who loves her dearly and will continue to protect her once I am gone. They will have each other. But you, my brothers…“ She stops, and then, unbelieavably, she pushes herself to an upward position. He can see how the movement pains her, and yet she does it.

„I’d hoped you’d bring the news that our brothers are friends again“, she says. „Since this is not yet so, there is something I must ask of you, or else there will be no peace, for me, now or ever.“

If she asks him to reconcile Wilhelm and Friedrich, he will have to lie, not just by omission, but directly. Will have to pretend there is a living Wilhelm to be taken back by the King in honor, instead of a corpse in Berlin, in a coffin, slowly dissolving into rot. As she herself will, before the year is out, he’s sure of it now.

If he’d had the chance, he’d have promised Wilhelm anything. They told him his brother had died screaming, full 23 hours of it, fighting against the doctors who were trying to prolong his life.

„Don’t leave him“, Wilhelmine says. Heinrich stares at her. „Heinrich,“ she says, „Henri, don’t leave him. Whatever happens. It is hard, I know it is. The hardest thing anyone could ask of you. But you must promise me. Do not allow him to argue with you as well. We learned harsh lessons, he and I, such harsh lessons. They didn’t show us how to love without causing pain. We learned that only from each other. And I cannot leave him in this world without knowing…“

Until this moment, he has been sitting on a footstool next to her chaiselongue. Now, abruptly, he rises. He can’t bear to look at her any longer, and so he turns towards the window, showing the garden she has had designed in such exquisite taste. She’d been raised to be a Queen, Wilhelmine had, and finding herself the Margravine of a tiny state instead, she’d turned a provincial mansion into a miniature Versailles.

„I know my duty,“ Heinrich says, and he almost chokes on the words. „To the state and to the King. I will not abandon that duty, now or ever. There may be seventeen years between us, my sister, but I think we learned the same lessons.“

„Come here,“ she whispers.

Last year, just a short time before Wilhelm’s command ended in public dishonor, word reached them in the field that their mother had died. Heinrich has loved his mother, but the mourning for her had soon been overtaken by the ongoing horror that was developing, and even that had to be pushed inside, for Friedrich had given him supreme command of the army in Saxony, and that meant every soldier’s life now depended on him.

He thinks of his mother now, the late Queen Sophia Dorothea. As a small child, he had not seen her often. In the nursery, they had called him „your highness“ and had told him that he was a prince, and that his mother was the Queen just as his father was the King, of course. But he had not connected those words to his actual parents, the short, stocky man whom illness often forced into a wheelchair and the worn-out woman pregnant with his brother Ferdinand, as he now knew she must have been in his earliest memories. No. When he’d turned four, on a cold but clear January day, becoming old enough to leave the nursery and join Wilhelm’s household, there had been a big celebration for the entire royal family, and on that occasion, he’d seen the two people together whom he’d assumed to be his parents until then, all the candles making the room so bright that he only discerned the silhouettes for a moment, a graceful young woman and the young man at her side, holding hands and whispering into each other’s ears. These two, Heinrich had thought, were the King and Queen.

He hadn’t understood then that „Crown Prince“ was not another name for „King“, but he would find out soon enough. And Wilhelmine, of course, has never been his mother.

This time, he doesn’t take the stool next to chaiselongue, but sits next to her. She puts her ruined hands to his head, palms outstretched, pressing one on each of his cheeks.

„Thank you,“ Wilhelmine says. She kisses him on the forehead, her lips burning with fever, and then, when he closes his eyes, once on each eyelid. Each kiss comes with a wish. „Live,“ she says, „love“, and finally: „Be at peace.“

He flatters himself to be something of a strategist. He is even convinced he might manage not just to survive this war but to do so in a way that will allow most of his men to survive as well, in honor, not in shame, and, if they are very, very lucky, even victorious. Yet to accomplish all three of the tasks she has just set out to him, meaning them as a blessing, that, Heinrich thinks, needs more than a good strategist. More than the genius they ascribe to his brother.

It needs someone who is not, and has never been a Hohenzollern.

Still, two out of three do not sound impossible right now, here in her salon with his oldest sister, whom no one will ever praise for her tactics; and yet he has entered this room with the grief in his heart crying for revenge and will leave it bound never to take it. Hearing her uneven breath, he finds he does not begrudge her this victory. She, at least, will be at rest, sooner rather than later, and at peace.

They sit quietly together, and while the high ceilings of her rooms keep the August heat at bay, he can pretend, just for a while, that they are not here at all, but in Potsdam. It is a cold, clear winter day, Wilhelm is at his side, excited that they will now live together, never to be parted, and there, just out of the corner of his eyes, are they: his oldest siblings, together as well, happy, and with their whole lives ahead.

**Author's Note:**

> Historical footnote: the quotes from letters from Friedrich to Heinrich are all from actual letters written that summer, between the deaths of (August) Wilhelm and Wilhelmine. Heinrich did visit his sister without telling her about August Wilhelm's death and emerged from the meeting (correctly) convinced she would die. She died in October that same year, on the same day Friedrich II. lost the battle of Hochkirch. 
> 
> Heinrich, whom Friedrich refered to more than once as "my other self", managed to be both Friedrich's greatest support and greatest opposition throughout their lives. More about the disastrous fallout between Friedrich and August Wilhelm - as well as Heinrich's reaction - [here](https://rheinsberg.dreamwidth.org/10642.html), while an overview over the life-long correspondence between Friedrich and Heinrich is [here](https://rheinsberg.dreamwidth.org/10883.html).


End file.
